


your friends are greedy(they all want something from me)

by farfarawaygirl



Category: The Society - Fandom
Genre: Cassandra’s death is a factor, Depression, F/M, Hallie if you squint, Mentions of Suicide, They Are Kids, They want to go home, This is darker than i intended, the aftermath of the finale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-18
Updated: 2020-11-18
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:01:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,137
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27615253
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/farfarawaygirl/pseuds/farfarawaygirl
Summary: “Allie.” He says her name with the same inflection he did on the night of fugitive. When she had flown over the hood of the car. It’s silly, but it makes her heart clench in her chest. Cassandra was alive then. “I didn’t mean for things to get like this.”There’s not really much to say. Allie’s doesn’t want to scream. She doesn’t want to fight. She doesn’t want to talk about it; about Harry and Lexi, about Luke’s betrayal. Doesn’t want to think about what Campbell almost did to her, what he will do to her. She wants her mom. And her dad. Allie wants her old life, with her sister across the hall. And Will as her best friend. She wants the simplicity of being the Assistant Stage Manager and worrying about AP Calc finals.She wants that bit of dirt beside Cassandra.Harry reaches out and touches her ankle, Allie’s too tired to pull away.
Relationships: Allie Pressman/Harry Bingham
Comments: 6
Kudos: 47





	your friends are greedy(they all want something from me)

**Author's Note:**

> Follows the events of the finale. 
> 
> Title from Old Bone by Wet.

It’s been three weeks. 

Allie has sat in the basement of someone else’s empty house, locked in a small laundry room for most of the time. Twice a day she gets access to a bathroom, and two square meals. But someone is always watching her. She hears their footsteps, their breathing, just outside her room. 

She’s so tired. 

Weary. Spent. Fatigued. Depleted. Finished. Empty. Used up. 

Thank you to her perfect score on English on her SAT’s. Allie’s got synonyms for days. 

Using an old bobby pin to make a scratch on the back of the door Allie has kept track of the days. Today is day 21. There is no window down here, just an old washer and dryer, cupboards full of bulk detergent and a spider. 

On day fourteen Allie had considered the merits of death by detergent. They had lost, mostly because of how vividly she remembers being poisoned with anti-freeze. In the back of her mind, a tiny voice had simply said, ‘we’re not there yet’. But, now in day twenty one Allie is looking at the bottle of fabric soften with something more than morbid curiosity. 

That must be why they come and get her the morning of day twenty two. 

Allie feels detached from her body as they March her to the front of the church. Detached from this place. She feels almost nothing when she sees Bean and Gordie. Almost nothing when she sees Grizz. And just general disappointment when she sees Will. 

There is this niggling thought about what would happen if she just turned and ran, that keeps running through her head. Would they shoot her? Would she escape, only to die in the woods? Could she thrown herself in front of a car?

Honestly, Allie hardly even feels relief when Will is cleared of charges. They’ve assigned him work duty as penance. Luke un-cuffs him, Allie watches as he sinks into the crowd. Gordie hugging him. 

“You’re killing me. That’s what you’re asking me, to die for you.”

Her words. Her voice from that night around her kitchen table, ring unwanted in her ear.

“Do I have to die, so everyone else can live?”

Allie laughs when she remembers that one. Her and Elle face to face in the grocery store, the story of that dumb movie. Before she can stop it, the laugh grows a little louder. A little wilder. People turn to stare at her. 

She’s laughing, and Jason is still holding her elbow tightly in his hand. 

Harry is just staring at her. Well, fuck him. Fuck Lexie too. 

“We are still deciding what to do with you.” Lexie is glaring. Allie thinks she looks ridiculous.

“I have a suggestion.” And that’s when she knows it would have to come to this anyway, because everyone stills and listens to her. So, yeah, it was always going to have be like this. “I’m a drain on resources. Food and Guard duty. Make the smart choice.”

Harry rolls his eyes, still not there yet, but Allie sees the way Helena tenses and knows that she understands. “What is the smart choice, Pressman?” Harry is focussed on her. Behind him Campbell gets a look of dawning understanding, and Allie thinks she sees some twisted spark of pride in his eyes. 

“Kill me.”

Everything goes absolutely still for a long moment. Allie holds Harry’s gaze, she’s not about to waver now. It’s this or the fabric softener. 

“What?” Luke manages to gasp out, and then it’s chaos. People are shouting. Gretchen is calling this whole thing a farce. Allie hears the richness of Grizz’s protest, Will and Gordie, Bean; people she loves fighting for her. 

She wishes she had something to say to them. 

I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I am so sorry. 

I love you. 

It’ll be okay. 

But none of that would be enough. She can’t bring herself to care. 

Tears slip down her face, but for the first time in twenty two days, Allie feels relief. 

The chaos is getting louder, more boisterous, Allie misses the order but Jason and Clark start moving her towards the front of the sanctuary. They are about to lead her through a door, when she decides to look back. She will allow herself this; one last look. 

Grizz is who she sees first, his face contorted in some emotion between rage and disbelief. Allie holds his gaze for half a second, determined to see her friends one last time. Will, who she thought she loved. Bean, Cassandra’s best friend, and Gordie. Behind them just for a second she sees Sam, confusion on his face. Her favourite cousin. 

No Becca. No baby. No Elle. No Kelly. 

Helena is the last person she sees as Jason tugs her through the door. Allie wonders what she is thinking of. If she knows what Luke has done. It doesn’t matter now, but she hopes Helena sees that Allie would never do the things she is accused of. 

Jason pulls her into what must have been the pastors offices, it has a big desk and leather chair, bookshelves crammed with books line every wall. A small wooden plaque holds a painting of Jesus, his face serene as he looks towards the sky, even though he’s crucified. 

Allie understands that now. 

She’s ready for death. 

Ridiculously she thinks of Harry Potter. The story about the Deathly Hallows, and death greeting you like an old friend. She hopes it’s Cassandra. She wants it to be Cassandra who greets her when this life ends. That would be so much easier to bear.

“What the fuck is your problem?” Harry pushes into the room, his hair wild from him running his hands through it. “Do you have any idea...” he stops abruptly as Lexie, Luke and Campbell walk in. 

Campbell is grinning. “Well played, Allie. I’m surprised, I never really took you for a strategist.”

“It’s all that chess with Uncle Rogers.” Allie quips, suddenly bold. 

This makes Campbell laugh; a true, belly laugh. “You’ve backed us into a corner here.”

Allie looks down at her wrinkled outfit, her wild tumble of hair, and raises her handcuffed wrists. “Yes, clearly I hold all the cards.”

“Shut up!” Lexie snaps, her face red, “you’re both so god damn dramatic.”

Allie thinks of Thanksgiving, of Lexie on the stage, and disagrees. She does stop talking though. Mostly because she is looking at Luke, and he looks destroyed. He’s wiping tears of his unshaven cheeks, it looks like he hasn’t slept in days. 

“What your loyalty is worth.”

She remembers that too. Allie’s thinks she remembers everything about this place. It’s burned into her brain, unwelcome and unwanted, but there. Living rent free in her mind. 

Emily. 

Cassandra.

Dewey. 

This may be a parallel universe, but Allie doesn’t know how she would ever be able to go back. How could she? 

The thought of returning to her other life rest heavy in her brain. How could she look at her parents? After Cassandra, after Dewey. How could she go back to living like it didn’t cost her everything to keep going. 

Harry’s watching her watch Luke. 

“That’s be suicide.”

Distantly Allie remembers her hand on his wrist. His hand on hers. She remembers an other night, him playing with her hair. 

“Get out.”

She had said that to him, when he came to apologize for Cassandra. What might have happened if she had let him stay? It that an other universe now? Like the one they are friends in. Like home. It’s so far beyond her reach that there is no use in hoping for it. 

Luke is properly crying now, snuffling. No one knows what to do, so Allie reaches out her hands to him, just covering his wrist. Campbell groans. This kindness makes Luke turn to her, he looms over Allie for a second, and she feels a brief moment of panic before he’s pulling her towards him. Wrapping his arms around her. 

“I lied.”

Allie nods. She knows this. 

“I’m so sorry Allie. I gave you my word.”

Sweet, simple Luke who she took AP chemistry with a whole lifetime ago. Who once bought her cough drops because she was helping out at a football fundraiser, and he was tired of her coughing. Who lived down the street from Sam, and who she would see running down the block on brisk Fall mornings. 

She doesn’t have absolution for him. Allie doesn’t have it in her, but she does awkwardly grasp his shirt, lets him hug her. That’s all she can mange today. Luke understands that. 

“God, Holbrook,” Campbell snarks, “get it together or go and change your tampon.”

Luke steps away from Allie, but she still holds onto his shirt. 

“We’re not going to kill you.” Lexie says abruptly, leaning against the desk.

“Yes, you are.” Allie says, the same time that Campbell says, “yes, we are.”

It’s not the ally she thought she’d have, but Allie will take it. 

“While I’m alive I’m a threat to you. It’s the smart thing to do.” Harry is watching her with this indecipherable look on his face. 

“No,” Harry insists. 

“You’re not really in charge, though, are you?” 

He flinched at Allie’s words. Campbell is watching her, Allie feels his gaze on her skin. It reminds her of a spider. She focusses on Luke, so she doesn’t shiver. This time she says the words that she knows will make him listen. “You promised me, Luke. Show me that your loyalty is worth more than nothing.”

Jason and Clark weren’t there when she made Luke promise her. They don’t know the true depth of his betrayal. Allie watches Luke close his eyes. When he opens them again he’s searching her face. “I didn’t promise you that.”

No one else know what they’re talking about, and Allie so keenly aware that the whole room is trying to understand what her and Luke aren’t saying. 

“You knew what you were asking of me. I’m just asking you,” her voice breaks a little her, but Allie keeps her eyes locked on Luke, “to finish what we started that night.”

“This is all very cryptic and touching, but Allie, I want to know,” Campbell interiors, leaning back in the leather chair he’s claimed, “how do you plan on us killing you?”

She’s still looking up at Luke, but seeing Campbell’s actions from the edge of her vision. “I don’t know, shoot me, execute me on the green, just do it quick and do it soon.”

“Now, cousin, you know that’s not my style.”

She has the sudden memory of a wingless bird, and Sam’s face as he shared that story. 

“I’ll do it.” Luke interrupts. “I’ll do it.”

“No one is doing anything!” Harry pushes at his hair again. 

“Please.” Allie says, and then Harry is looking her. Really looking at her. 

“You know that you’re asking us to help you commit suicide.” 

The ghost if his hand moves on Allie’s wrist. 

“It’s suicide to not do it.”

She never thought she would be here, talking someone into killing her. But, life is not what she expected. 

Harry’s voice is softer now, “I said no, Allie.”

Campbell’s grin says otherwise. She just has to give him time. 

“So, what then? You lock me up in some basement, and what, wait for me to kill myself?” There’s a hint of panic to her voice, she’s remember the pain of the anti-freeze, and thinking about fabric softener. Allie turns to Luke, she’s still holding onto his shirt. “Please.” She begs. “Do it now. Please, Luke.”

She reaches for his side, she knows she saw the flash of a gun earlier, maybe she can just grab it - someone is grabbing her. Harry is hauling her away from Luke, pushing her against a bookshelf. Allie feels true panic now. A real sense of hysteria humming at the edge of her consciousness. She ties to step around him, but Jason boxes her in. 

“No!” She shouts, tears sprouting down her cheeks. “Please, Luke, please!” In the struggle Campbell gets up and moves towards her, Allie desperately thinks that if she hurts him he’ll just do it to spite her. Unthinking she swings her cuffed wrists towards him, catching his shoulder. 

He moves then, lightening fast, slamming her back against the bookshelf, shelves digging into her back and hip. Allie feels his fingers on her throat. She doesn’t fight back. There’s shouting, a scream and a crash, and then nothing. Allie sinks into the darkness. 

-

She’s knows she failed as soon as she starts to regain consciousness. There isn’t even a moment when she foolishly thinks this is some twisted version of the afterlife. Allie just knows she is Harry Bingham’s room, because she can see the ridiculous pool table. She squeezes her eye shut and thinks of Cassandra. 

“You’re awake.”

Allie doesn’t move. Harry shifts on the bed, and Allie hears the rustle of his pants on the comforter. 

“I was worried that Campbell might have succeeded.”

“I wish he had.” Allie’s voice is all wrong. It’s harsh and gravelly, but not because of her tone, she can feel the bruising on her throat. 

“I’ll run you a shower.” Harry moves off the bed, she hears him in the bathroom, senses when he comes back in, but keeps her eyes closed. “Allie, please get up.”

“I wish I was dead.”

Harry laughs, but it’s hallow. “Please, Allie.”

She moves. Sits up slowly, stumbles a little when she tries to stand, but shifts away from his hands. Harry follows her, so Allie firmly shuts the door. Someone has opened each drawer and cupboard, removing anything other than a hotel set of shampoo and conditioner, there’s a lonely luffah in the shower. Allie strips, looks at herself in the mirror for the first time in weeks and wants to cry. 

Her throat is red, bruises blooming across her neck, and up to her chin. Campbell’s work. Across her back there are two lines of fresh bruises. The bookshelves. She’s lost weight, ghosts a finger down across her ribs. Allie feels like an alien. She doesn’t know this body. Doesn’t know this place. 

Someone knocks at the door. 

Allie scrambled for a towel, pulling it up just as the door opens. She can tell from the surprised look on Harry’s face that he expected her to be in the shower. Instead he looks at her neck, and takes a deep breath. 

“Shit.” Harry gingerly steps into the bathroom. “I was just bringing you some clothes to change into.” He’s holding a pair of sweatpants, clean socks, but when Allie’s sees the underwear and sports bra she wants to scream. They’re Cassandra’s. So is the blue shirt, and the Cast sweatshirt from last years production of All’s Well That Ends Well. 

Instead, she says nothing. Just watching him. Harry places them down on the counter and Allie knows he is taking in her bruised back. 

“I’ll give you some privacy.”

When he leave Allie steps under the stream of hot water. She tries to remember what life was like where having a shower didn’t make her feel like she was hitting the lottery. She fails. 

Harry is sitting at his desk when she comes out. He’s reading Hemingway, but when she enters the room he pushes it away from himself. Allie wishes he had just kept on reading, wishes she could just walk out the door. 

“What’s going to happen to me?”

The questions hangs between them, it seems incredibly complex, but really Allie just wants the answer on what is happening next. Is she being sent to the wine cellar? Back to the laundry room? Where?

“You’re staying here.”

She can’t stop the venom from leeching into her voice, “with you?”

“No, I’ve moved to a different room.” He looks down, “this room has a lock on the door.”

Allie nods, and then heads for the bed, after her little pile of old camp blankets in the laundry room this is luxury. Harry’s bed might have always been a luxury. Pulling the blankets up over her head, Allie tries to block everything out. She can still hear him breathing though.

“Kelly is going to come and look at your neck.”

Silence. She doesn’t feel like talking. Her throat burns with each breath. 

“Allie.” He says her name with the same inflection he did on the night of fugitive. When she had flown over the hood of the car. It’s silly, but it makes her heart clench in her chest. Cassandra was alive then. “I didn’t mean for things to get like this.”

There’s not really much to say. Allie’s doesn’t want to scream. She doesn’t want to fight. She doesn’t want to talk about it; about Harry and Lexi, about Luke’s betrayal. Doesn’t want to think about what Campbell almost did to her, what he will do to her. She wants her mom. And her dad. Allie wants her old life, with her sister across the hall. And Will as her best friend. She wants the simplicity of being the Assistant Stage Manager and worrying about AP Calc finals. 

She wants that bit of dirt beside Cassandra. 

Harry reaches out and touches her ankle, Allie’s too tired to pull away. 

The door jiggles, and Harry is moving away from Allie as Kelly comes in. They exchange a loaded look, Allie to tired to decipher it, and then Kelly is sitting on the bed beside her, touching her face gently. 

Allie wishes she wasn’t crying. But she can’t seem to stop. It’s not sobs and painful heaving of her chest, just an unending stream of tears. 

“Oh, Allie.” Kelly’s voice is so soft in the gloom of Harry’s room, if Allie had a heart left to break, it would have shattered. “What happened to you?”

Harry answers, “Campbell.”

Kelly pulls out some ice packs of her backpack, says soothing words when Allie shivers. It reminds Allie of her mom, the way Kelly tucks her in, and then it’s dark and she’s sleeping. 

-

Harry’s room has been cleaned in a similar fashion to the bathroom. They left books and clothes, but the pool balls and cues are gone. A pocket knife Allie remembers seeing in a side drawer when they looked for a condom is gone. The condoms are still there.

They’ve moved her, but she’s still in prison. 

She spends Christmas and New Years in Harry’s room, alone except for a Guard bringing her food. On Christmas they include a small undercooked cupcake. Allie leaves it on the tray. She dreams of other universes. 

One where Cassandra lived.

The one where her and Harry are friends. 

Home. 

A universe where it’s just her and Grizz, that’s her favourite. They trade off books in her dad’s study, and drink more tea than is good for them. 

Darker universes. When her friends are raped coming home from prom. 

One where gun shots ring out every hour on the hour and Allie is the one holding the gun. 

The forest gets closer each day in one particular bad nightmare. Inch by inch, branch by branch, suffocating her. 

Other noises from the house bleed into her days and nights. Harry’s voice down the hall. Campbell’s distinctive footfalls on the stairs. Sometimes Allie hears laughter from downstairs. 

She loses track of time. Of how many days it has been. 

It might be the 10th of January when Allie finds a half full bottle of pills under the couch. It’s purely an accident. She was reading on the pool table, and tossed the book away when the heroine failed a moral test, it slid under the couch. When she knelt down to reach it, her fingers touched the rounded sphere of the orange bottle. 

It’s a name she doesn’t recognize. Some pain pill she isn’t familiar with. 

Allie counts them out. Eight pills left. 

She takes them moments later, cupping her hand under the sink to drink the water down. When she is done, she looks at herself in the mirror. She doesn’t recognize the person looking back at her. Allie goes and lies back down on the pool table, wondering if eight pills was enough. She doesn’t feel different. 

-

Harry has a feeling in his gut. He had the same feeling the night of prom, the night Cassandra was shot. It’s out him on edge all day. Luke’s on duty at Allie’s door when he goes up to check. 

“How’s she doing?”

Luke keeps his eyes averted. “I dunno. I haven’t looked in.”

That feeling expands in his abdomen. “Open the door.” Luke fumbles for the key, eyebrows drawing together, as he looks at Harry. “I just have a weird feeling.” 

He sees the empty pill bottle first. 

Then Harry sees Allie. She’s pale, lying on her side on his pool table. It’s kind of a blur after that. Luke carries her downstairs, and Harry is texting Gordie and Kelly. Sending a message to Grizz. Anyone. They load up in the Maserati, and Harry pushes the laws of physics to get to the clinic. 

Luke keeps on repeating that he can’t find a pulse, her breathing is shallow at best. Harry doesn’t really think he’ll survive losing her. It’s a silly thought, but he wants the universe where they’re friends to be this universe. When Luke is carrying her into the clinic, Harry has an odd moment of déjà vu; it makes him think of Emily and the church. God, don’t be like that. 

Gordie is there waiting, but Harry wonders if he can handle this, because he’s already looking panicked. 

“I need someone to give her compressions,” Gordie shouts, digging through a crash cart like he’s an extra on Grey’s Anatomy. Luke is crumbling to the ground, so Harry leans over the gurney and touches Allie’s chest. She’s so pale. “What’s happening? Did she pass out? No one told me she had a heart condition.”

“Pills!” Harry cuts in, counting off, and giving a rescue breath, “she took some pain pills. I don’t know how many.”

“Fuck.” Gordie goes back to the cart, he’s hooking up a machine to Allie’s chest, pulling out a stethoscope and listening. “Narcan.”

Harry watches as Gordie pulls out a needle, jams it into Allie’s leg and pushes down. He listens to her heart again. 

“What’s happening?” Kelly and Will arrive, breathless and sweaty from their run. 

“I think she OD’d.” Gordie grabs a second needle. 

Kelly is pulling a dog-eared textbook from her back pack. “How much Narcan did you push?”

Gordie answers, but Harry is focussing on compressions. He thinks of that episode of The Office where Dwight cuts off the dummies face, and how ridiculous this whole thing is. They are kids. God damned kids. Not Doctors. Not mayors. Not prisoner and jailers. 

Gordie stabs her leg again. 

It’s the strangest thing, but Allie just seems to come to life under his arms. Her colour changes, her body reacts and she is sucking in air. Gordie is listening to her heart with his stethoscope. She’s glaring up at Harry. 

He sees the questions on her lips, hears it like she says it out loud, ‘why?’, but Will is pushing him out of the way, and grabbing her shoulders. 

“Allie.” Will says her name like a prayer. Harry turns away, avoids Kelly’s gaze. “What have they done to you.”

She is sobbing now, wild, animalistic, inhuman sobs, crumbling into Will’s arms. Burrowing her face in his neck. Harry recognizes that kind of pain.

“I just want to die.” She cries. “I just wanted it to all stop, you know.” Suddenly she pushes Will away, and violently vomits over the side of the bed. It’s mostly bile, watery and pungent. “I just wanted to go to sleep.”

When he wanted to just fade away she visited him in his bedroom, cleared out garbage, cracked a window and touched his wrist. God, he needed that touch. He craves it still. Even after everything she reached out and touched him. And, this was how he repaid her?

A shoddy coup? Stealing her Guard? Lies and deception. 

Harry thinks about all that, as Kelly finds her a cup of water, as Gordie checks her stats, as Will cleans up her vomit. He weighs it all on a scale in his mind, and then he turns and looks at Luke. Luke looks as washed out and tired as he feels. 

“Allie,” Harry says, reaching out a hand to touch her wrist. “Wanna help me bring down Campbell?”

For the first time in weeks he sees a spark in her blue eyes. She turns her wrists, and grasps his wrist in her fingers. 

“We bring down Campbell, and then we find a way to get home.”

**Author's Note:**

> I’m late to The Society game, but I fell hard for this rag tag bunch of children who need naps, and a mom. 
> 
> Please let me know what you liked! 💜♥️💙💚🧡


End file.
